This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2002-31612, filed Jun. 5, 2002, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet cartridge, and more particularly, to an ink-jet cartridge which includes a filter to control communication between a printhead and an ink reservoir filled with ink.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of a conventional ink-jet cartridge 100 disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,537,136. Referring to FIG. 1, the ink-jet cartridge 10 includes a cartridge body 11 including an ink chamber filled with a foam material 12. A filter 18 is positioned on a standpipe 14 at a lower portion of the cartridge body 11. The filter 18 isolates the foam material 12 containing ink from the standpipe 14. Ink which flows through the filter 18, is supplied to a printhead (not shown) through the standpipe 14. The filter 18 prevents a passage of bubbles and ink particles from the ink chamber into the printhead.
However, since the filter 18 is a dome-shaped filter and is deformed by a compression force caused by the foam material 12, a function of the filter 18 may be lowered. Also, since bubbles which flow from the printhead to an ink reservoir of the ink chamber, are collected on a center portion inside the dome-shaped filter 18, the ink cannot be smoothly supplied from the ink reservoir to the printhead.
To solve the above and other problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide an ink-jet cartridge which guides bubbles to move from a printhead toward edges of a filter and smoothly supplies ink from an ink reservoir to the printhead.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
Accordingly, to achieve an aspect of the invention, an ink-jet cartridge includes a cartridge body forming an ink reservoir, a standpipe coupled to one side of the ink reservoir, a printhead formed on a lower portion of an ink supply passage formed by the standpipe, through which ink from the ink reservoir is ejected onto a printing medium in a droplet shape, and a filter which covers a top portion of the standpipe. The filter is formed in a convex shape toward the printhead.
It is possible that a hook is formed on an edge of the filter to be disposed on (coupled to) the top portion of the standpipe.
It is also possible that the filter is substantially formed in a hemispherical shape or a cone shape.